Senate votes to bring back straight-party voting — on a straight-party vote

Well, at least the New Mexico Senate is consistent on one issue.

A bill trying to bring back straight-party voting passed the Senate floor on Thursday (March 7) on a straight-party vote.

Senate Bill 276, sponsored by Sen. Howie Morales, D-Silver City, calls for allowing voters to step into voting booths and with one move, cast all their votes to members of one party.

“Since the 1960s, New Mexico has had a straight-party balloting option,” Sen. Morales said but Republicans argued that straight-party voting hurts minority parties (and Republicans are in the minority in New Mexico) and will depress voting on down-ballot items and candidates.

Just 13 states allow the practice in all elections and since the mid-1990s six states have eliminated it.

“This will send us to an era that has passed us by,” Sen. John Ryan, R-Albuquerque. “If you’re an independent party candidate, like a Green Party candidate, you’re at a disadvantage.”

Third-party advocates across the country, ranging from the Green Party to the Libertarian Party, have called for eliminating straight-party voting. One Green Party candidate in Wisconsin called it “a product of one of the enduring problems of our political system, which is that  it perpetuates and protects itself against demands for reform.”

In the end, all 24 of the Democrats present Thursday afternoon voted for the bill and all 17 Republicans voted against it. The bill now moves on to the House of Representatives.

Some background: In the November elections, straight-party voting was prohibited by Republican Secretary of State Diana Duran because there is no provision in state law specifically authorizing it.

Last year, Associated Press story reported hat New Mexico Democratic and Republican voters tend to vote the straight-party ticket at roughly the same rate (23 percent for Democrats, 18 percent for Republicans in the 2010 elections).